The Vistana’s getting there

I don’t know how it ended up this way, but I happen to know a lot of people that are moving into The Vistana. You know The Vistana, that huge apartment building under construction on W. Commerce Street and N. Santa Rosa Avenue, catty-cornered to El Mercado.

(Courtesy Ed Cross)

Masons work on the N. Santa Rosa Avenue side of The Vistana.

When my Vistana friends told me their move-in date had been pushed back from November to December, I decided to go straight to the source, developer Ed Cross, for the lowdown.

“We are running about six months total behind our original schedule,” Cross said via e-mail. “The majority of the delay was due to the rains last summer when we were working on the foundations.”

In the e-mail, Cross said once city inspections are complete, he anticipates The Vistana’s first residents will move in Dec. 1. He also wrote that 45 of the 247 units have been pre-leased, “and to our pleasant surprise 60 percent of our tenants work outside of downtown.”

My Vistana friends said there are plans for a night out on the town courtesy of The Vistana, as a kind of gesture for the delay. Cross wrote that there are also plans for a grand opening party.

As far as the ground floor, Sterling Bank will occupy one of those spaces. No word on who will fill the others.

I’ll have more on The Vistana as it gets closer to completion. It will be interesting to see how fast its units fill up, especially considering the rent is relatively affordable.

As far as the anticipation, Cross wrote, as others have told me as well, “We are getting comments daily about the building’s presence on the skyline. It will truly be a new landmark.”